to compete for a television special to hype the book. It is not
surprising to any informed observer that the documents imploded.
What is a bit surprising is that Hersh and ABC could have been so
naive for so long. And it is ironic that ABC should use 20/20 to
expose a phenomenon that it itself fueled twelve years ago.
What happened on September 25th was the most tangible
manifestation of three distinct yet overlapping journalistic
threads that have been furrowing into our culture since the
Church Committee disbanded in 1976. Hersh's book would have been
the apotheosis of all three threads converged into one book. In
the strictest sense, the convergent movements did not actually
begin after Frank Church's investigation ended. But it was at
that point that what had been a right-wing, eccentric, easily
dismissed undercurrent, picked up a second wind-so much so that
today it is not an eccentric undercurrent at all. It is accepted
by a large amount of people. And, most surprisingly, some of its
purveyors are even accepted within the confines of the research
community.
The three threads are these:
1. That the Kennedys ordered Castro's assassination, despite
the verdict of the Church Committee on the CIA's assassination
plots. As I noted last issue, the committee report could find no
evidence indicating that JFK and RFK authorized the plots on
Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo